FOR STARTERS, the first flaw in the delirious study on The Lancet (warning: pdf file), claiming that there's been aproximately 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion, appears immediately when you look at figure 2, on page 5 of the pdf: there's almost no violent death before the invasion. Yeah, right. And Saddam was Heidi's grandaddy benignly presiding over an idilic Switzerland-like country.

But there's many, many more issues with the study, and for that let me refer you to several authoritative voices: Fred Kaplan, on Slate (not a Bush shill, he); Shannon Love, on ChicagoBoyz, and Birkel on his blog (it's three posts: one, two and three).

I can't really see how some people took the study seriously: after all you know you have some problems with a study when it goes, literally, almost 10 times further than Human Rights Watch and Iraq Body Count, who are using some pretty questionable methodologies themselves.

Case closed.